The Westfield plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Chance of showers
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Mostly sunny; warmer
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Westfield’s center stands about 820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 2,160 ft, a difference of 1,410 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jay Peak, about 3,810 ft, 5 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ottauquechee Formation - carbonaceous phyllite member, from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Muscovite-schist, gneiss, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Phyllite, limestone. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 425 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Phyllite, muscovite-schist, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite, granofels, phyllite. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 7 smaller units along the line are not listed.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Westfield reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of Taft Brook, the Missisquoi and the Richelieu: about 210 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Champlain.
80 miles of the trip are on the Richelieu.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Westfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
